Must we always believe all women?

On the issue of believability as it relates to sexual violence, authors of a new book lose the argument before it was even defined.

Whether Russell Brand will be charged is yet to be seen, but the support from certain quarters will remain unwavering, writes Antonella Gambotto-Burke.

The fracas about Russell Brand – he’s a television celebrity, a reformed sex addict, and now married father of three – is just the most recent involving a man accused of using his position to access and sexually abuse or rape women. As Brand once famously said, “I’m a bloke ... who’s been given a Wonka ticket to a lovely sex factory thanks to the ol’ fame.”

On social media, the responses from a large number of women to the multiple accusations of sexual abuse were curious. Brand’s darker quotes (“I spat in her face. Yes, that’s right, I spat in the face of a beautiful woman who had made me cum,” etc.) had, incredibly, been forgotten. British actor Daniela Westbrook’s support for Brand was notably unequivocal: “It’s disgusting what’s being said about you. Never in my life have I met a more helpful kind and funny person. Because you speak the truth and question agendas of certain things doesn’t make you a target to be lied about. Wishing you the best we all know it’s lies. Sending love always.”

Whether Brand will be charged is yet to be seen – at least one report has been submitted to police – but the support from certain quarters will remain unwavering. During his imprisonment, even American serial killer Ted Bundy, who enjoyed sex with the heads of women he’d decapitated, still attracted female fans. Refusing to believe the women who testified against him, some went so far as to send him marriage proposals.

This issue of believability, particularly in relation to sexual violence, has now reached critical mass. Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt is the attempt of British academics Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn Claire Higgins to analyse the “historical overlap between #MeToo and the ‘post-truth moment’ ” in addition to the “negotiation of public truths”.

Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt

While this was never going to be a lay down misère, Banet-Weiser and Higgins lose the argument before it was even defined by opening with American actor Johnny Depp’s 2022 defamation trial against his second ex-wife, the American actress Amber Heard.

“The onslaught of misogynistic abuse and violence directed at Heard by Depp supporters and fans was, even in a context where misogyny has been practically normalised, astonishing,” Banet-Weiser and Higgins write.

“Almost all social media outlets, from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to TikTok, were flooded with content accusing Heard of being a liar.”

This righteous incredulity, which Banet-Weiser and Higgins then adopt as a platform, is a little confusing given that Heard was, as it was repeatedly shown, fudging. For example, during cross-examination, Heard acknowledged that yes, she had released a statement in August 2016 saying that she would be donating the entirety of the seven million dollars Depp had paid her to charity. Money, Heard stated, played no role for her personally except to the extent that she could donate it to “hopefully help those less able to defend themselves”.

In October 2018, she went so far as to appear on a Dutch television show, stating – firmly, with moist eyes, and to the host’s toasty approval – that the money “in total” had been donated to charity.

The problem? It wasn’t true. Under cross-examination, Heard stammered as she attempted to convince the jury that to her, the words “pledge” and “donate” were synonyms, which is why she’d held onto the green.

As it happens, Heard had told the High Court in London the same tall tale of philanthropy. Andrew Caldecott KC noted that the statement, which strengthened her “credit in an exceptional way”, was a “calculated and manipulative lie, designed to achieve a potent favourable impression”.

Johnny Depp and his then-wife Amber Heard in 2015. Picture: AFP

Banet-Weiser and Higgins mention none of these inconsistencies, preferring to focus – and at length – on the disdain of Heard’s audience, which they attribute to her failure to “perform a victimhood that was emotionally convincing”, rather than, say, to her blatant lies.

Seemingly in the same spirit, Banet-Weiser and Higgins launch into a chapter concerning the Karen Syndrome in relation to black men – why, historically speaking, white women (“Karens”) were always believed over black men in relation to sexual crimes.

“What kind of believability does the Karen wield?” they ask. “On one level, it is clearly a felt believability, wherein visible expressions of pain – especially tears – are sufficient to spur retributive action when performed by a white, feminine body … many white women strategically ‘lean in’ to the prototype of white womanhood as innocent, virtuous, delicate, profoundly vulnerable, and in desperate need of protection.”

Not unlike the blonde, blue-eyed, delicately featured Heard, misting up on Dutch television as she lied that she’d donated seven million to “defenceless” women and children, then.

The “spectacle of the suffering white woman carries affective force,” Banet-Weiser and Higgins agree. “The conditional basis of white women’s believability, in other words, is not so much a genuinely felt concern for their wellbeing inspired by their public suffering as the convenience of what they claim to suffer from for both white supremacy and patriarchy.”

Ironically, this stands as the perfect explanation for Banet-Weiser’s and Higgins’ ridiculous outpouring of squirmy girlfan love for Heard, a woman so white that she even had a child by surrogate.

Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt not only fails – and in the most depressingly spectacular way – to deliver, but compounds the very real issues with which it wrestles by falling victim to the usual woke tropes.

In addition, the logical inconsistencies, obfuscation, and general feminist flag-waving serve only to stifle the voices of those who deserve to be heard, such as the sex worker into whose face Russell Brand once spat.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke’s new book is Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine. Follow her on Instagram